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When Mom Is CEO: ‘Something Usually Has to Give’

Thirty-seven-year-old Marissa Mayer is young, powerful and pregnant – which makes her a modern-day case study in how to succeed at work while raising a family. If she pulls it off, Mayer could be “a landmark case for women everywhere,” as the Journal reported Wednesday.

The mother-slash-executives interviewed for this story shared tales of their own work-family juggles. Several repeated the same statement that has become a near-mantra for many high-powered working women: You can have it all. Just not all at once.

Before Mayer, most women running big companies waited until their 40s or 50s to take on CEO roles, when their children were older. Some have had stay-at-home husbands and nannies to help out with childcare. Even then, these women say, something usually has to give.

At a New York luncheon hosted by nonprofit Catalyst in March, Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison told an audience of women that her trajectory would have been impossible without a flexible husband who played the role of “Mr. Mom.”

Her younger sister, Maggie Wilderotter, chairman and CEO of Frontier Communications Corp., says it would have been almost impossible to rise to the C-level without prioritizing career over family, at least some of the time. “A lot of people don’t want to say that but it’s true,” she says.

She depended heavily on her husband Jay, a retired pilot-turned-winery manager, to stay at home and raise the kids. Even now, when her two grown sons need to talk, “the first person they call is Jay,” she says. (Mayer’s husband, Zachary Bogue, is a former attorney who recently launched a venture firm to back data companies. The couple has not responded to questions about their child-care plans.)

Wilderotter says she occasionally had to remind herself that she couldn’t control everything. Once, while she was at work, she learned that her husband was making repairs on the roof of their home – with their baby son right next to him, nailed in place by his clothing. (The child, Chris Wilderotter, was fine, and is now a firefighter. He jokes that his stint on the roof was the “sacrifice” he had to make for his mother’s career.)

Stephanie Sonnabend, CEO of Sonesta International Hotels Corp. since 2003, was the chain’s vice president of marketing when her daughter and son arrived in 1987 and 1989, respectively. She phoned at least one key lieutenant every day during both six-week maternity leaves. “Oftentimes, I would do it while I was nursing,’’ she recalls.

For Yahoo’s Mayer, who already faces many challenges at the foundering internet company, even a brief break for childbearing could create problems, according to Sonnabend. “It will be harder to hire people,’’ she says. “It will be harder to do some team building.’’

The biggest sacrifice for executives who are also moms? In Sonnabend’s case, she devoted herself to her career and child rearing but “I had very little time for myself. I recognized that would come later.’’